Ok, its not the full one, just a few sample questions. Here's my output

Could you pass the citizenship test?Your score is: 13 out of 2057122 participants answered the quiz.

Sheesh, I can tell you the major battles, dates, people,arts, cultural history I can even tell you which days the UK saints days fall on, and don't get me started on the politicians or sportsmen and women of this country.

I'm sooooooooooooo embarrassed.

Last edited by Ivan on Wed Jan 23, 2013 9:19 pm; edited 3 times in total (Reason for editing : Typo's)

I scored 14/24 and the pass mark is 18. I'll go and start packing my case right away, so that I'm ready when the Border Agency turn up to deport me. Oh, I forgot, Theresa May has relaxed the controls, so I may be able to stay after all....

Lest we Forget - that our politicians are sadly unworthy of all those we remember today..

...especially those who announce one day that they intend to sack wounded soldiers (and thousands of other ones), and then the next day feign concern for the dead at the Cenotaph - when they don't give a sod about the living.

Yeah that test was rather difficult. I think there were too many statistical questions that most people wouldn't know offhand. That's not "common knowledge" and has to be researched. Knowing how many children there are in Britain or the percentage of the population who identify as Muslim ... yeah right.

Shirina wrote:I think there were too many statistical questions that most people wouldn't know offhand. That's not "common knowledge" and has to be researched. Knowing how many children there are in Britain or the percentage of the population who identify as Muslim ... yeah right.

I scored 100% on the US Citizen practice exam, though. *dances*

There were a great many statistics, which is why and how I scored so high on the second test (the questions were almost identical).

While teaching civics/government/history in the late 1980s amnesty program, I helped a number of folks master the US citizenship test of the day. Far fewer statistics, and far more fundamental principles and practical applications. I suspect that most naturalized citizens know far more about the fundamentals of US democracy than the average educated Native American USV.

Just done the test, 17 out of 24, failed, i didn't think it was too bad for an old man suffering from memory loss. If i had been marking it i would have marked my score as a pass. I am sure they must be giving the wrong answer for some of the questions, got to be seven they are getting wrong.

oftenwrong wrote:Professionals in the field of Testing have long been aware of the distortion that can be introduced by the "practice" element.

That's why potential Aircrew, for example, can only attempt the aptitude test every four years.

Also true of SAT/ACT tests (one or the other required for entrance into may US colleges/universities) and IQ tests; if one ractices the material, one score goes up.

No brag, just fact: Back when SAT prep classes where unheard of, I score 99+ percentile on both the language arts and mathematics sections of the SAT. As an undergraduate, my GRE score on the political science portion was high enough to exit every PhD political science program I examined.

How “smart” does that make me? I dunno.

I do know this: A friend whose undergraduate GPA smoked mine, and whose face I routinely saw making “A’s” in upper division government/political science and history courses taught by demanding giants, scored so low on his LSAT (Law School Admissions Test) that the testing service predicted (a) that no law school would ever admit him, (b) that if he did luck into a law school, he would never graduate, (c) that if by chance he graduated (barely), his GPA would be in the toilet, (d) that he would never pass the bar, and (e) that if by the skin of his teeth pass the bar, he would be a sorry excuse for a lawyer.

This gentleman was admitted to law school, graduated with a 3.2 GPA one semester early, passed one of the toughest bar exams in the United States on his first attempt (actually, he blew the roof off the sucker), obtained a position with legal aid, and took the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to federal district court twice, beat the pants off of their team of lawyers (five) and paralegals (at least five) both times by himself (well, he did have the assistance of a part-time secretary), and had HUD’s Lawyers begging for a negotiated settlement to avoid getting embarrassed a third time in open court.

So much for standardized tests having a hell of a lot to do with one’s intelligence, scholarship, and expertise. I wonder what Racehorse Haynes’ LSAT score was?

Last edited by RockOnBrother on Thu Nov 24, 2011 1:43 am; edited 1 time in total

Hated the GRE because of the horrific time limit. I couldn't stand how they'd give you a 6 paragraph except of something loaded with statistics and conditional phrases then expect you to answer 3 or 4 questions about it, each question containing 5 possible choices, and with each choice having only one or two words different from each other, and you had less than a minute to answer them. Ridiculous. I wasn't trying to get a degree in speed reading, and even if I were, why would I need it? If I could answer those questions, I would already know how to do it.

Years afterward, I stumbled into a relatively lucrative standardized test tutoring service (my own) because a bunch of would-be public school teachers were not able to pass the math and reading portions of the CBEST. Ninety-eight percent (98%) of my students passed the CBEST test portions which they had previously failed. If one possesses “native intelligence” and sufficient scholarship to complete a bachelor’s master’s, or doctorate course of study, and gives oneself to me for the period of time I specify, sky’s the limit.

I’ve no reverence for standardized tests, including IQ tests. And given my success thereon throughout my post-first-grade life, it ain’t sour grapes.

And please remember, my brilliant friend’s LSAT score “stunk up the place”, and he’s one of the finest and most capable attorneys I’ve ever known or known about.

I've always been a good test-taker. I can fly through them and get perfect or near-perfect scores. Just to give you an idea, I had to take a standardized test competing with over 800 college-educated professionals from across the state of Pennsylvania. I scored 6th overall, and that was with a 96% (I tied with 3 other folks). Thus even those who outscored me only did so by a couple of questions. The point, of course, isn't to pat myself on the back, but to emphasize that testing was something that came easily to me, and tests involving the English language are easiest of all. Yet because of those nasty (and unfair IMO) time limits, my English competency was only slightly higher than my math competency - and I'm HORRIBLE at math!

I'm also a somewhat slow reader because of my nature. This isn't because I have trouble with the language, but because I absorb every word. Skimming through test questions like that is a surefire way of getting something wrong because you didn't notice it said "does" and instead of "doesn't" or you misread a number as 727 instead of 772. I try to avoid freshman mistakes like that ... but the GRE tries to pressure you into making them, and as long as you're not taking half an hour to answer a grouping of 5 questions, there's no need for it. Speed-testing is even less valuable than normal testing since it can only measure surface knowledge, the stuff that is sitting right on the tip of your tongue and not what you really know.

I don't know why that bothers me so much since I still scored well above any necessary entrance requirements for any program I desired to take, but I am a bit of an anal perfectionist. When I know I didn't test to my true potential, I get all grrrrr and go postal!

Albert Einstein’s thought experiments revolutionized physics. How long do you think that he “thunk” about the relationship between the speed of light and time? Had Brother Albert been working under GRE time constraints, mankind probably wouldn’t have the General Theory of Relativity.

I once had a book about standardized tests (“They Shall Not Fail” may have been it’s title) in which one of Educational Testing Service’s premier test constructors exhibit irreverence for his own tests, noting that such tests test the ability (or good fortune) of the test taker, on that test day, to bubble in certain spots on a piece of paper for which a machine has been programmed to look. That’s it.

And let’s not talk about the errors of scholarship sometimes found within the tests themselves. One test that I took had “Mohammadism” as the correct answer. More than one Muslim scholar has taught me that there is no such thing as “Mohammadism”; the religion is Islam and its adherents are Muslim. So much for standardized tests connection to intellectual excellence.

One key skill taught when I tutored was time management, which involves, among other things, realizing that “reading comprehension” sections of standardized tests actually don’t test reading comprehension. You’re an excellent example of why this is o. To truly comprehend, and comprehend deeply, at higher levels of learning (analysis, evaluation), one must contemplate, mull over, etc., all things diametrically opposed to skimming.

One lady held a PhD; her dissertation was “way deep” stuff, but she couldn’t pass the writing portion of the test I mentioned earlier. Once she learned to “shelve” her scholarly nature while writing for the test, she breezed through it.

I did, too. It was called simply "The Big Test" (IIRC). This book gave the life story of the man who invented the SAT and it described how the test came into being and what it was used for. As it turns out, the test was never designed to test your knowledge but to ensure that only the elite ever made it into college. The founder and subsequent financial backers of the SAT believed in a very small academic elite, an "aristocracy of knowledge" if you will, and the SAT was designed to be the gatekeeper. In order to pass it, you essentially already needed to know that which you were supposed to learn in college. That is no longer the case now, per se, but the vestiges of that ignoble goal still remains.

Shirina wrote:I did, too. It was called simply "The Big Test" (IIRC). This book gave the life story of the man who invented the SAT and it described how the test came into being and what it was used for. As it turns out, the test was never designed to test your knowledge but to ensure that only the elite ever made it into college. The founder and subsequent financial backers of the SAT believed in a very small academic elite, an "aristocracy of knowledge" if you will, and the SAT was designed to be the gatekeeper. In order to pass it, you essentially already needed to know that which you were supposed to learn in college. That is no longer the case now, per se, but the vestiges of that ignoble goal still remains.

Thanks for jogging my memory. The book that I had was called “They Shall Not PASS”, and the authors criticized the same sentiment.